“Providing Renewable Energy Units For Off-Grid Facilities” with Christian Lecorps of Atlas Prime NRG

Jeffrey (0s):
Well, here we are, again, this is radio entrepreneurs. My name is Jeffrey Davis, and we are consistently and constantly streaming stories of entrepreneurship and how everyone or people are trying to deal with this economy. And that is in real time. So you don’t have to wait for a book two years from the fact. And for those who like following radio entrepreneurs on the stories, don’t forget, you can find us on our website, radio entrepreneurs.com on LinkedIn radio entrepreneurs, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitter. It’s biz on radio entrepreneurs, Instagram, YouTube, iTunes, Google podcasts, and Stitcher, quite an array of choices for anybody who likes a buffet.

Jeffrey (43s):
Our next guest is Christian LeCorps, Founder and CEO of Atlas Prime NRG. Welcome Christian.

Christian (52s):
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for having me.

Jeffrey (54s):
Thank you very much. And Christian, tell us about Atlas prime.

Christian (59s):
Sure. Atlas prime is a kind of lifelong mission for me, but the goal that we’re pursuing is to actively reverse climate change by 2050, while making every country on the planet, energy independent. Did

Jeffrey (1m 15s):
You say 2050? 15 or 50?

Christian (1m 21s):
Unfortunately, I don’t think we can do it much faster than that, but yeah, that’s the goal,

Jeffrey (1m 25s):
But do we have to do it faster than that?

Christian (1m 28s):
It would be nice. Yeah. It’s one of those things that you don’t want to put off.

Jeffrey (1m 33s):
29 years, a long time. Yeah. Based upon size. So how did you get into this business? And, you know, I have series of questions. Very interesting.

Christian (1m 43s):
Yeah, sure. So I grew up in Haiti, which meant that there are a lot of socioeconomic issues that are tied to climate change that I just grew up in that environment. I didn’t really know that, you know, they were, everything was all interconnected, but because of blackouts, I almost died three times. By the time I was 12. And so at a very young age, I just decided, okay, this is one thing that’s not okay and I’m going to fix it. So I became an electrical engineer. I started working in the architectural engineering space, the construction space. And over time I just realized that things weren’t going to get, you know, w we’re not going to get the impact that we really need from a consumption and distribution standpoint.

Christian (2m 32s):
Of course, it’s important. We can’t let go of that. But when I asked myself, what’s the one thing we can do to reverse climate change and address, or make a whole lot easier to tackle all of the socioeconomic issues that are tied to it. So clean water, energy, poverty, balance of trade, things like that, you know, how do you make all those things easier to tackle in one shot and producing electricity in a way that doesn’t promote the vicious cycle that most businesses find themselves in when they start buying fossil fuels and produce their own power.

Christian (3m 13s):
You know, that, that was the answer that, that I came to. And when did you start the company? Oh, well, like I said, the, the, the goal, the mission started at a very young age, right out of college. I took a first shot at it with a, with a good friend of mine from high school. And, you know, we didn’t get very far because we thought that, you know, the answer was nuclear and we quickly figured out that it’s not a technological barrier on that front. So we took a pause and shut down for two years and came back from the grave in 2017. And we’ve been incorporated since 2018.

Jeffrey (3m 52s):
You’ve got to, you got five years under your belt. Who, and what are your typical clients and what are they purchasing from you?

Christian (4m 3s):
Sure. What they’re purchasing is the electricity that comes out of our units. So the unit is it’s the equivalent of a diesel or a gas generator that we just plopped down on, on their property. And we only charge them for the electricity that they use. Our ideal customers are actually telecom providers and data centers in emerging markets where the electricity grid is not so good, but we’re actually working with one of the best research institutes in the country to find applications in making use of waste heat.

Christian (4m 43s):
So process heat, like making steel glass, cement, things like that. There was a lot of hot air that goes out the pipe, and we can actually take that and convert it into electricity or hydrogen, depending on the application. Interesting,

Jeffrey (4m 59s):
Are, are these one off projects? Are these annual projects? How did the contracts work?

Christian (5m 5s):
The contracts they’re, they’re very similar to the contracts that you find in commercial solar projects. You know, they’re, they’re at least to own five, 10 years, depending on the finances and the numbers that they’re looking to hit. But yeah, it it’s, it’s no different than a power purchase agreement, right?

Jeffrey (5m 27s):
How do you find your clients? How do they find you?

Christian (5m 30s):
Well, right now we’re, we’re, we’re doing things that don’t scale. So we’re actually reaching out to them and we’re being very intentional about the clients that we reach out to because it, things are very early for us. The first prototype is actually still in design and construction in collaboration with Southwest research Institute. So you’re getting, talking to clients that understand that this is, this is going to take a while before it’s, it’s truly ready to be deployed across, you know, hundreds of, you know, telecom towers and data centers. You know, that that’s important.

Christian (6m 10s):
So

Jeffrey (6m 11s):
Again, I did probably limitation on my part, but how do you make, cause I know this is one of your claims, a climate justice and more inclusive social justice movement.

Christian (6m 21s):
Sure. Well, if you look at how electricity is produced right now, most of it is through fossil fuels and that’s being done because for a long time, fossil fuels would cheaper. And in emerging markets, that’s still the case. So w w the problem with that is that it makes the electricity grid much more unstable. So businesses are much more prone to buying their own fuel. And what that starts is a vicious cycle, where they become more and more susceptible to global price changes to, to the fuel that they’re buying.

Christian (7m 5s):
And it shifts the balance between, you know, the, the cost of goods that they’re, that they’re producing, because, you know, if the price of fuel jumps up, they can’t necessarily jump up the price of their goods, just as fast in an emerging market. That’s, that’s actually a very difficult thing to do. And it it’s plunged like Haiti back in 2018 for a solid two years, everything was shut down. And you look at how or why that happens. Even in the us, back in the seventies, when the oil embargo was going on, that the people that suffer first are typically lower income communities, whether the electricity is on and, you know, there’s pollution going on, that’s killing millions of people, or, you know, there is a blackout and you have still millions of people dying from indoor air pollution or fires getting started everywhere.

Christian (8m 6s):
So if you resolve that, if you make countries energy independent, if you make the businesses energy independent, then they can start sustaining themselves. Then they can start doing and showing up the way that they they’ve always been able to show up. They just haven’t had the opportunity. And so energy, poverty is a really big thing. And if you solve it the right way, it’s actually a systematic problem that can, that can start fixing itself. If you approach it correctly. Very interesting. Where are you located right now? I am located in Brockton, Massachusetts.

Jeffrey (8m 49s):
And just to remind our listeners that we’re speaking with Christian Macor founder and CEO of Atlas prime NRG. My name is Jeffrey Davis, I’m CEO, a major LLC management consulting firm. Also posted radio entrepreneurs. Christian. If somebody is looking for you and wants to know more about Atlas prime, how would they find you?

Christian (9m 10s):
Oh, you can go to our website at Atlas prime. That’s aids, L a S P R I M E N R g.com. Or you can shoot me a text message directly or on WhatsApp. Cause I have a lot of conversations internationally as well. So 5 0 8 3 4 5 6 9 0 9.

Jeffrey (9m 32s):
Thank you very much for being on the show today, we look forward to you joining our radio entrepreneurs network and continuing to keep us informed. Hopefully everybody, this is radio entrepreneurs. My name is Jeffrey Davis. We’ll be right back with more stories.